What use is an F-call?

It’s been said many times, Amateur Radio is about experimentation and learning. It bears repeating, Amateur Radio is about experimentation AND learning.

I know you’ve heard it all before, but what does it actually mean?

I regularly speak with Amateurs across the bands, via email, the phone and face-to-face. The single thing that strikes me is that there is lots of activity that you never see, never hear about, never even know about, unless you happen to bump into the Amateur who did the job or was part of the team doing it.

We have the experimentation down pretty pat, that is, we all regularly fiddle with new stuff and fix, change, add or create contraptions or solutions regularly.

Personally we’re doing that and each of us is personally learning from the effort.

The thing that comes back to me in the conversations is that people are individually re-inventing the wheel over and over again. I see little evidence of inter-Amateur communication. There is some crossover in smaller groups, one-on-one, between friends, but I see little in the way of documentation coming out of VK.

That’s not to say it isn’t there, some people almost religiously document their efforts with YouTube videos, PDF explanations and plans, web-pages of instruction and efforts, but those Amateurs are far and few between.

Next time you make the effort to do some experimentation, I’d like to encourage you to do some sharing as well, by writing it down and publishing the endeavour, who knows, you might learn something else in the process.

I’m Onno VK6FLAB